In syntax, verb-second (V2) word order[1] is a sentence structure in which the finite verb of a sentence or a clause is placed in the clause's second position, so that the verb is preceded by a single word or group of words (a single constituent).
Examples of V2 in English include (brackets indicating a single constituent):
"Neither do I", "[Never in my life] have I seen such things"
If English used V2 in all situations, then it would feature such sentences like:
"*[In school] learned I about animals", "*[When she comes home from work] takes she a nap"
V2 word order is common in the Germanic languages and is also found in Northeast Caucasian Ingush, Uto-Aztecan O'odham, and fragmentarily in Romance Sursilvan (a Rhaeto-Romansh variety) and Finno-Ugric Estonian.[2] Of the Germanic family, English is exceptional in having predominantly SVO order instead of V2, although there are vestiges of the V2 phenomenon.
Most Germanic languages do not normally use V2 order in embedded clauses, with a few exceptions. In particular, German, Dutch, and Afrikaans revert to VF (verb final) word order after a complementizer; Yiddish and Icelandic do, however, allow V2 in all declarative clauses: main, embedded, and subordinate. Kashmiri (an Indo-Aryan language) has V2 in 'declarative content clauses' but VF order in relative clauses.
^For discussions of the V2 principle, see Borsley (1996:220f.), Ouhalla (1994:284ff.), Fromkin et al. (2000:341ff.), Adger (2003:329ff.), Carnie (2007:281f.).
^Ehalka, Martin (2006), "The Word Order of Estonian: Implications to Universal Language", Journal of Universal Language, 7: 49–89, doi:10.22425/jul.2006.7.1.49, S2CID 52222499, Corpus ID: 52222499
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